Ana Belén Montes spent more than 20 years in prison for sending sensitive information from the US to Cuba / web
Ana Belén Montes, the “Queen of Cuba” and designated as one of the most harmful spies in the history of the United States, is released after spending more than 20 years in prison for sending classified information to the Cuban authorities over 17 years. years and while working in the US intelligence service.
“The damage is incredibly extensive,” said Peter Lapp, a former FBI agent and one of his captors on September 21, 2001, when Montes left the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) facilities in handcuffs. , in Washington, after being discovered as an informant for the then president of Cuba, Fidel Castro.
Every day, this daughter of Puerto Rican parents and who had two brothers who worked in the FBI, sat at her desk with the goal of memorizing the three most important things of the day, which she later transmitted to a network of nine Cuban spies, seven of them located in the US and the other two in Havana.
The DIA senior analyst and top expert on Cuban military affairs even went so far as to pass on information about a secret program of the US government’s National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) based on the use of satellites and that was related to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
In Lapp’s words, that information from satellites was the “most damaging it gave, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
The information was so sensitive that in the event of a trial it could not have been used by prosecutors, otherwise the sentence would have been greater than the 25 years in prison he received after pleading guilty in 2002.
Ana Belén Montes was released – at press time – from a maximum security federal prison for women in Fort Worth (Texas).
THE SUPPORTER OF THE LATIN AMERICAN LEFT
During the 1980s, Montes was a master’s student at Johns Hopkins University and is remembered by some of her classmates as a fervent supporter of left-wing movements in Latin America, a stance that drew the attention of a Cuban intelligence agent. who recruited her.
In 1985, shortly after the first of a series of trips to Cuba, she was selected for a position in the DIA, to which she applied convinced by the then-called Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI).
From the US government agency, Montes transmitted, in the form of encrypted messages or in meetings that could be in broad daylight, classified information that, as Lapp points out, cannot be measured by volume but by quality, as is the case with the identity of four US spies in Cuba.
Throughout all those years, his motivations were always based on a deep “anti-American” feeling and the conviction that his activity helped the Cuban people.
“They are very good at recruiting individuals like Montes, like-minded, compassionate people who don’t do it for money,” Lapp says of the Cuban intelligence apparatus, in his opinion one of the best in the world and which no doubt currently has undercover agents. within the US Government.
“You are not really helping the people of Cuba if you help the Cuban government. You are helping a corrupt, murderous, oppressive and authoritarian regime. Period”, adds the former agent, who this year will publish “Queen of Cuba. An FBI Agent’s Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years ”, a book that details the ins and outs of the investigation that led to his capture.
PROBABLY NO REGRETS
“It was stoic,” Lapp replies when asked about Montes’s reaction to being confronted that morning at the DIA headquarters. “She kept her composure, I thought she was going to pass out, but I think she was prepared for that day from the start,” she adds.
His arrest, which occurred ten days after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, was the corollary of a federal investigation launched after the suspicions of DIA counterintelligence agent Scott W. Carmichael, who stated that the damage caused by Montes was “ exceptionally serious.”
As US officials at the time have acknowledged, a 1998 intelligence report, in which Montes played a key role, concluded that Cuba did not pose a significant military threat to the US.
Lapp does not believe that once the informant, now 65 years old, is released, she will move to Cuba, since she will probably prefer to be with her mother and will have to deal with her FBI agent brothers, who never knew of Ana’s activities. Belen.
Do you still have the same convictions? “I have not heard about any remorse, about any change of heart. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he stands by his convictions. It’s sad,” replies Lapp. (EFE)
